Gupta discussed the project on the air Friday morning. A CNN-supplied transcript of the piece follows:

"Well, as you know, I've been following the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina now for a few years," Gupta said. "Been down there about a dozen times, mainly to look at the hospital systems, how you rebuild a hospital system after what happened down there.

"But something else was sort of nagging at us, this idea that the idea of fitness and just taking care of your health on your own was becoming less and less of a priority, especially among children. They just had no place where they could actually go and exercise.

"So, as part of the Fit Nation project, we started brainstorming and came up with this idea to actually help build a playground down there in Metairie, one of the areas that was really badly hit by the hurricane and by all the flooding as well afterwards. In fact, you can still see the water levels on the trees up to 5 feet high.

"Well, it is in that exact area that we partnered with KaBOOM! to try and put together this playground. Now, this is going to be a remarkable thing. Take a look at some of the work that's already being done. They're actually setting all the groundwork.

"This is a huge space in which we're going to actually build this playground. It's going to cost about $150,000. And we're partnering with KaBOOM!, who ultimately wants to put a playground within walking distance for every child in America . That's what they're hoping to do.

"We want to build this playground so that kids can get out, they can have a safe place to play, they can get there easily. We also had this idea that we should let the kids themselves come up with the idea of how to design this playground. So take a look at some of these drawings.

"We told the kids, grab crayons, grab paper, and actually come up with your dream playground. Take a look at all those pictures. And then with the help of the kids, actually created the playground that we're going to build there over the next couple of days.

"So, this weekend, I'll be down in New Orleans actually hammering in nails and putting together that playground, along with about 60 other volunteers. And hopefully next week we'll have something very important and very neat to show you. We'll have that for you when we get it."